Clips June 7, 2002

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips June 7, 2002

ARTICLES

Bush proposes massive overhaul of homeland security agencies
Rowley Criticizes FBI Bureaucracy
TSA plans two smart card pilot projects
DOD looks closer at promising technologies
PUC Introduces 'Bill of Rights' for Phone Users
Pa. creates cybercrime task force
Online Movie Site Closed Down
Copyfight Renewal -- Owners of Digital Devices Sue to Assert the Right to 
Record
Man Remains Jailed Over Web Postings
Security Hole Found in KaZaA File-Sharing Service
Forman Pushes E-gov into Homeland Security Arena
Liberties Group Sues Studios Over Consumers' Use of Digital Devices
Public or Private? Which is the Internet
Analyzer gets 18-month jail term
Half of Germans don't want internet access
Government in Spain promises internet for all by 2004
Turkish internet law faces strong opposition
Eight people injected with silicon chips
Stolen moments (Article on Internet Piracy)
Are you switched on? turn viewers into active participants
Homeland security plan skimps on tech

*******************
Government Executive
Bush proposes massive overhaul of homeland security agencies
By Jason Peckenpaugh
jpeckenpaugh@xxxxxxxxxxx

In what would be the biggest restructuring of government since World War 
II, President Bush proposed Thursday to move seven entire agencies and 
offices from several others into a new cabinet-level Department of Homeland 
Security.


"This reorganization will give the good people of our government the best 
chance to succeed," said Bush in a televised address from the White House. 
"Employees of this new agency will come to work every morning knowing their 
most important job is to protect their fellow citizens."

The new department would include the Federal Emergency Management Agency, 
Coast Guard, Transportation Security Administration, Customs Service, 
Immigration and Naturalization Service (including the Border Patrol), 
Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, and Secret Service.


Offices of some other agencies would also be absorbed, such as the Commerce 
Department's Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office; the National 
Domestic Preparedness Office and the National Infrastructure Protection 
Center at the FBI; and the Federal Protective Service and the Federal 
Computer Incident Response Capability at the General Services Administration.


The resulting department would have an initial budget of $37 billion and 
170,000 employees, making it bigger than all other agencies besides the 
departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs. It would pool the missions and 
resources of dozens of agencies that currently have responsibility for 
aspects of homeland security. For example, the department would combine the 
port security duties of the Coast Guard, Customs, APHIS, and INS under one 
roof.


These agencies would be organized into four broad operating divisions 
designed to combine missions and resources that are currently scattered 
across government. The Coast Guard, TSA, Customs, INS, APHIS and the 
Federal Protective Service would form a border and transportation security 
division. An emergency preparedness and response division would include 
FEMA and offices from Justice and HHS. The Critical Infrastructure 
Assurance Office, and National Infrastructure Protection Center would form 
an Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection division. This 
division would also receive intelligence from the CIA and FBI and provide a 
central place for the analysis of terrorism threats.


A final division focused on chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear 
countermeasures would pool the research activities of labs such as the 
Energy Department's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Plum 
Island Animal Disease Center, now located in the Agriculture Department.


Only the Coast Guard and the Secret Service would retain their independent 
identities under this new structure, according to a Bush administration 
briefing sheet on the proposal. Other agencies would be combined in various 
ways. Customs and the INS, for example, would pool headquarters staff and 
inspection duties at ports of entry.


No federal employees would be laid off in the process of creating the 
department, according to the administration. But the White House argued for 
giving the department's leaders much more authority over personnel than 
most current federal managers have.


Affected agencies would continue to perform non-homeland security duties as 
well. The Coast Guard, for example, would retain its search and rescue and 
fisheries inspection missions, while Customs would continue to collect 
import duties.


Under the reorganization, the White House Office of Homeland Security, 
headed by former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, would continue to exist. 
Fleischer said Ridge "will be the one fighting for the creation of this 
department," but refused to say whether he would be appointed to lead it.


Several members of Congress have proposed legislation to create a 
Cabinet-level homeland security agency. Just last week, in an interview 
with Government Executive and other National Journal Group publications, 
Ridge said he would advise President Bush to veto any legislation that 
would turn his office into a Cabinet department. Ridge said presidents are 
"entitled to a few advisers" who owe their loyalty solely to the president.


"I believe that the president and future presidents always would be well 
served having an adviser coordinating the actions among [the] multiple 
agencies" charged with protecting homeland security, Ridge said. "I don't 
think you get that if you are accountable to Congress."


Ridge, however, backed the idea of consolidating homeland security 
operations currently spread among several agencies.


"We've got a lot of well-meaning people at these agencies that have a 
homeland security function," he said. "They have responsibility, but the 
lines of accountability are fuzzy. I think in the long term, when you align 
responsibility and accountabilitywhen you reorganize ityou have an 
opportunity to bring greater control, greater leadership, a better use of 
the resources and ultimately you enhance your ability to prevent or respond 
to a terrorist attack."


Administration officials are clearly concerned about potential problems in 
winning support for the president's proposal within the agencies.


"Reorganizing the government is never easy," Fleischer said. "It involves 
turf, it involves hardworking Americans who enjoy being in the agencies 
that they're in who will have to adjust to change."


Headquarters for the new Department of Homeland Security might be located 
outside of Washington, the White House indicated, to ensure continuity of 
operations in the event of a terrorist attack on the nation's capitol.


Administration officials urged members of Congress to act on the proposal 
before adjourning for the fall elections. The new agency could be up and 
running by the start of next year.
*********************
Associated Press
Rowley Criticizes FBI Bureaucracy
Thu Jun 6,11:01 PM ET
By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent

WASHINGTON (AP) - The FBI (news - web sites) is weighed down by 
bureaucracy, "make-work paperwork" and a culture that discourages 
risk-taking, an agency whistle-blower told Congress on Thursday, venting 
frustration with an organization she said could have done more to prevent 
the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"Seven to nine levels (of bureaucracy) is really ridiculous," Coleen 
Rowley, a lawyer in the FBI's Minneapolis office, told a Senate Judiciary 
Committee (news - web sites) hearing and a nationwide television audience.

Rowley appeared after FBI Director Robert S. Mueller suggested that 
Congress expand surveillance powers that were put into law only seven 
months ago, and said his storied agency needs to be "more flexible, agile 
and mobile" if it is to prevent future terrorist attacks.

Mueller also disclosed it could take two or three years  far longer than 
the one year he originally hoped  to bring FBI computer systems up to 
standards needed to sift intelligence information efficiently.

The panel met as President Bush (news - web sites) outlined his latest 
plans for strengthening America's defenses against terrorism. They included 
creation of a new Department of Homeland Security, combining 
responsibilities now scattered in several federal agencies  including 
customs, immigration, the Secret Service (news - web sites) and the Federal 
Emergency Management Agency (news - web sites).

At the same time, members of the House and Senate intelligence committees 
met in a guarded room in the Capitol to continue their own review of the 
events of Sept. 11. Sen. Bob Graham (news, bio, voting record), D-Fla., 
said the session included a staff-led review of the growth of Osama bin 
Laden (news - web sites)'s al-Qaida network and U.S. counterterrorism efforts.

While Mueller has appeared in public several times since the worst 
terrorist attacks in the nation's history, Rowley was making her debut, a 
veteran FBI attorney so unaccustomed to publicity that her prepared public 
testimony contained lawyerly footnotes.

Praised by Sen. Charles Grassley (news, bio, voting record), R-Iowa, as a 
patriot for stepping forward, she told lawmakers she would not talk about 
the details of the case of Zacarias Moussaoui that prompted her explosive 
letter last month. In a 13-page memo, the FBI agent accused bureau 
headquarters of putting roadblocks in the way of Minneapolis field agents 
trying to investigate the foreign-born Moussaoui, who is charged with 
conspiring with the hijackers in the attacks.

Instead, she focused her remarks on the frustrations of working in an 
"ever-growing bureaucracy" that she said led to risk aversion, make-work 
paperwork and so many layers of officials that effective decision-making 
was impeded.

"We have a culture in the FBI that there's a certain pecking order and it's 
pretty strong, and it's very rare that somebody picks up the phone and 
calls a rank or two above themselves," Rowley said.

Last August, FBI agents in Minnesota arrested Moussaoui, a French citizen 
of Moroccan descent, on an immigration violation after a flight school 
instructor became suspicious of his desire to learn to fly a commercial jet.

FBI headquarters turned down the Minneapolis' office request to seek a 
search warrant to examine Moussaoui's computer. After the Sept. 11 attacks, 
the FBI got the warrant and found information related to jetliners and 
crop-dusters on the computer hard drive, officials said. The government 
grounded crop-dusting planes temporarily because of what it found.

In his turn in the witness chair, Mueller won praise from several senators 
for his efforts to reform an agency that Sen. Charles Schumer (news, bio, 
voting record), D-N.Y., described as hidebound. "You inherited a great 
organization but also a great bureaucracy," added Sen. Mike DeWine (news, 
bio, voting record), R-Ohio.

Even senators who were critical of Mueller at various points joined in the 
praise.

At the same time, he faced sharp questioning about the FBI's failure to 
alert the committee earlier this year about the so-called Phoenix 
memorandum, a document sent to agency headquarters last summer noting that 
several Arabs were suspiciously training at a U.S. aviation school in Arizona.

Sen. John Edwards (news, bio, voting record), D-N.C., asked Mueller why the 
headquarters agent to whom the memo was addressed, David Frasca, had not 
told the Judiciary Committee about it in January when Frasca met with the 
panel's staff. Mueller said he did not know.

Sens. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., and Schumer introduced a measure on Wednesday to 
make it easier for agents to obtain wiretaps and conduct searches in 
foreign intelligence cases, saying that if the FBI had been able to listen 
in on Moussaoui it might have been able to prevent the attacks.

"This is a problem, and we're looking for solutions to address this 
problem," Mueller replied, adding that the Justice Department (news - web 
sites) would be issuing a formal opinion on the legislation in the future.

"We are looking at ways to tweak" the legislation passed by Congress late 
last year, he added.

Mueller had previously outlined plans to reorganize the FBI to devote 
greater resources to anti-terrorism, including its ability to analyze 
available intelligence. "This Congress is all too familiar with the FBI's 
analytical shortcomings," he said. "Building subject area expertise or 
developing an awareness of the potential value of an isolated piece of 
information does not occur overnight," he said. "It is developed over time."

He told one senator the agency had begun hiring additional translators 
skilled in Farsi, Pashto and other languages, and said the FBI now has the 
ability to translate intercepts "in real time" in terrorism cases.

At the same time, he told seemingly incredulous senators that computer 
technology at the agency didn't allow an agent to search all existing 
electronic reports for a key phrase  the term "flight school," for example.

Asked time after time whether Rowley's letter or the Phoenix memo could 
have prevented the disastrous attacks, he sidestepped.

"I'm hesitant to speculate as to what would have happened if, ..." he said 
at one point.
***********************
Federal Computer Week
TSA plans two smart card pilot projects

The Transportation Security Administration plans to launch at least two 
pilot projects this year for a smart card program that eventually will put 
the identification technology into the hands of 10 million to 15 million 
workers, a transportation official said June 5.

"Our vision is to have one credential a transportation worker will wear," 
said Gregg Hawrylko, program manager for the Transportation Department's 
Credential Project Office. "We're hoping to simplify the process and raise 
the bar on security."

The cards will provide secure access to buildings and computer networks and 
will hold biometrics, most likely in the form of fingerprints, Hawrylko 
said at the Smart Card Alliance's conference this week in Washington, D.C.

TSA will maintain a central index of basic employee information that could 
include name, biometric template, security level and areas of access. "We 
will store as little as possible to handle privacy concerns," he said.

The agency will make its procurements through the General Services 
Administration's Smart Access Common ID contract but will soon release an 
announcement soliciting ideas from all vendors, he said.

Working groups are finalizing issues related to the cards, such as design, 
identity documentation, requirements, policy and a cost-sharing strategy.

The pilot projects could be focused around major airline hubs or seaports, 
he said.

"Funding will dictate how quickly we can run," a transportation official 
said, but the program could go agencywide within three years.

Congress has criticized the fledgling TSA's spending and has yet to 
determine its budget for fiscal 2003. The Bush administration is asking for 
$4.8 billion.

In the near-term, TSA will set the policy for trusted traveler cards for 
frequent airline passengers. However, John Magaw, Transportation 
undersecretary for security, has said that there is no card that will allow 
people to get through security completely, Hawrylko noted.

The trusted traveler cards could be developed in tandem with the smart 
cards and will use the same architecture.

TSA is coordinating its effort with the Federal Aviation Administration, 
which is moving forward with its own smart card pilot project.

"They're just running a little bit faster than us," the transportation 
official said. "We're looking forward to finding out what lessons they 
learned."

Both agencies will align their programs with GSA-developed smart card 
interoperability specifications.

A top priority is ensuring interoperability throughout DOT, Dan Mehan, the 
FAA's chief information officer, said May 22 at the E-Security and Homeland 
Defense conference in New York City.

The Aviation and Transportation Security Act, signed in the wake of the 
Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, requires the department to develop a universal 
worker identification system.
**********************
Government Computer News
DOD looks closer at promising technologies
By Dawn S. Onley

Nearly eight months after it released a request to industry for help 
developing technologies to combat terrorism, the Defense Department will 
now take the next step.

Members of the multiagency Technology Support Working Group have been 
sifting through more than 12,500 responses and has identified 600 proposals 
it considered promising. The group asked the companies that submitted them 
to create white papers on their proposals and expand on details, including 
costs.

"We are now at a point where we are trying to ask for specific numbers and 
move on some of those ideas," said Deidre A. Lee, director of Defense 
procurement.

During this phase, ideas will be more closely scrutinized to see if they 
are feasible, said Air Force Lt. Col. Mike Halbig, a Defense spokesman. As 
the white papers come in, the working group will narrow the pool further. 
Defense officials have asked for technologies that will prevent and combat 
terrorism, attack difficult targets, conduct protracted operations in 
remote areas and develop countermeasures to weapons of mass destruction.

Pete Aldridge, Defense undersecretary for acquisition, technology and 
logistics, and head of the working group, asked for new products and 
applications that could be fielded within 12 to 18 months.

The chosen ideas for which the group sought white papers included:


a system that, using an integrated database and data mining tools, could 
identify patterns and trends of terrorist groups and predict their behavior
a portable polygraph machine to conduct impromptu interviews
a screening system with integrated sensors to alert officials of someone 
carrying chemical or radiological weapons.

"We received an incredible outpouring of interest from all over the globe," 
Halbig said.

The working group is made up of 80 federal agencies including DOD, the 
Environmental Protection Agency, General Services Administration, Federal 
Aviation Administration and Energy Department.
************************
Los Angeles Times
PUC Introduces 'Bill of Rights' for Phone Users
Telecom: The proposal would set tougher standards for all carriers, 
covering privacy, billing, disclosure, other issues.
By ELIZABETH DOUGLASS

Hoping to relieve frustrated phone customers and rein in consumer abuses, 
state regulators Thursday unveiled a "Telecommunications Consumer Bill of 
Rights" containing tougher minimum standards for wired and wireless 
carriers in California.

The new rules, more than two years in the making, are designed to address 
mounting complaints from customers about billing problems, customer 
service, misleading sales pitches and other ills.

Existing rules governing phone companies are inadequate, cryptic and buried 
in indecipherable government filings, said consumer groups and Carl Wood, a 
member of the California Public Utilities Commission and the driving force 
behind the regulatory overhaul. Wood's proposal sets--for the first 
time--minimum standards for phone companies in the state and applies them 
to all carriers, including long-distance, local, prepaid phone card and 
mobile-phone service providers.

"I think this is a huge deal," said Michael Shames, executive director of 
the Utility Consumers' Reform Network, a San Diego-based consumer group. 
"From the consumer point of view, creating a comprehensive set of 
guidelines for telecommunications is about eight years overdue."

The proposed telecommunications rules would require carriers to:

* Fully disclose all relevant rates, terms and conditions of service in 
clear language and in readable type size.

* Protect consumer records and personal information from misuse and 
unauthorized disclosure.

* Provide accurate and understandable bills that clearly label products, 
services, fees and the names of carriers providing the services, and 
provide prompt and fair redress for billing problems.

* Treat all similarly situated customers equally, free of prejudice or 
disadvantage.

In addition, the rules would require the PUC to promote consumer 
participation in rule making and public policy matters that affect them, 
and to provide effective recourse to consumers if their rights are violated.

The rules would apply to all carriers in California with more than $10 
million in annual revenue and would protect residential and small-business 
customers. The PUC would enforce the measures and could levy fines of 
$5,000 to $25,000 for each violation, Wood said.

SBC Pacific Bell, the largest local phone company in California, said it 
supports the proposal by Wood.

"Having rules that treat all the companies in the industry the same ... we 
think that's good for consumers," SBC spokesman John Britton said.

"Undoubtedly there will be a couple of areas we will want to discuss with 
the commission, but we think he's expressed some good ideas today."

The wireless industry, however, is expected to raise strenuous objections.

"I am fairly sure that we will get a lot of resistance from the mobile 
carriers, which enjoys exemptions from a lot of regulations that everybody 
else faces," Wood said.

But he pointed out that wireless phone service is playing a larger role in 
day-to-day phone use and is generating record numbers of complaints at the PUC.

Susan Pedersen, executive director of the Cellular Carriers Assn. of 
California, declined to comment on Wood's proposal.

"We're not in a position to comment right now, but we will be looking at 
the [rules] and following up with the commission," Pedersen said.

The rules are preliminary and need approval from the full commission.

After a 20-day period for the affected companies and others to comment on 
the proposal, Wood hopes to put the rules to a vote as early as Aug. 8.
*********************
Federal Computer Week
Pa. creates cybercrime task force

Pennsylvania's state police department has created the first of several 
planned regional task forces to fight the rising tide of computer crimes.

The first task force will be based in Embreeville, Pa., and will cover 11 
counties in south-central and southeast Pennsylvania, sharing information 
with district attorneys offices and local law enforcement agencies as well 
as other state and federal agencies, said Trooper Linette Quinn.

Funded through a $250,000 grant from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime 
and Delinquency, the task force will include representatives from local 
police departments and state and federal law enforcement groups who will be 
trained and given equipment, such as computers and wireless phones, Quinn said.

The commonwealth has a computer crime unit within its criminal 
investigative bureau, and some local law enforcement agencies have similar 
units, Quinn said. But the formation of the regional task force will help 
agencies pool resources and share information more effectively as the 
cybercrime problem gets worse, she said.

In the past 15 months, the commonwealth has investigated 705 "traditional" 
computer crimes  such as fraud, identity theft and child pornography  and 
558 "technical" crimes, including hacking and unauthorized access to a 
computer, Quinn said.

"It's becoming more prevalent," she said.
********************
Los Angeles Times
Online Movie Site Closed Down
By JON HEALEY
TIMES STAFF WRITER

June 7 2002

Dutch authorities Thursday took down Film88.com, a renegade online movie 
site, by persuading an Internet provider in Holland to pull the plug on the 
company's digital film library.

Film88.com offered viewers an online movie theater showing hit films on 
demand for $1, but it did so without paying or obtaining permission from 
the studios. Although the company said it operated out of Iran, which 
doesn't recognize foreign copyrights, its computerized film library was 
housed in Holland, said Tim Kuik, managing director of BREIN, a Dutch 
anti-piracy foundation.

The founders of Film88.com had tried a similar venture, Movie88.com, using 
computers located in Taiwan. But authorities in that country shut down the 
service and seized its computers in February in response to complaints from 
the studios. The latest venture had an even shorter run. The site's 
operators announced their arrival on Tuesday, and within two days 
Film88.com was offline.

The action demonstrates how quickly Hollywood can respond to piracy in 
countries that support international copyright treaties. Although the 
enforcement mechanisms vary from country to country, many nations require 
Internet providers to cut off infringing customers or risk being held 
liable themselves.

Kuik said his group acted in response to a request by the Motion Picture 
Assn., the international trade group representing the major Hollywood 
studios. Although the Film88 Web address is based in Iran, it apparently 
used a Dutch Internet provider, TrueServer, to store its movies and provide 
the large amount of bandwidth needed to display movies in near-VHS quality.

"The MPA understands that Internet piracy is a global phenomenon," said 
Mark Litvack, the association's director of legal affairs and worldwide 
anti-piracy efforts. "Both in terms of our investigative and our legal 
facilities, we are prepared ... to deal with it on a global scope."

The investigations into Film88.com and Movie88.com are continuing. On its 
Web site, Film88.com said only that it was facing a "technical 
proxy/caching problem" and promised to be back online as soon as possible.

If it does come back, Litvack said, the MPA will act again.
*****************
MSNBC
File-sharing sites try to go legit
Popular P2P services seek more copyright content, revenues
By Jane Weaver

June 6  As the recording industry turns up the legal heat on services that 
allow pirated music downloads, the popular peer-to-peer networks like 
Grokster and KaZaa are scrambling for ways to profit from the millions of 
Internet surfers who download files from their sites.
       GROKSTER ANNOUNCED THURSDAY that it had formed a partnership with 
software company FileFreedom that would allow independent musicians and 
artists to target potential customers at the file-sharing site.
       The high-profile Grokster is one of several online file-sharing 
networks facing lawsuits from the Recording Industry Association of America 
for allowing people to download pirated songs.
       The race to go legit is on as the online peer-to-peer networks 
(P2P) struggle to avoid Napster's fate. The record industry blames illegal 
music downloading for the decline in CD sales and has sought to cripple the 
numerous file-sharing sites which sprung up in the wake of Napster's 
shutdown last year.
       Earlier this week the RIAA said that it would expand the lawsuit 
against Grokster, MusicCity's Morpheus and KaZaa to include key figures 
behind the popular KaZaa service.
       Since Napster's demise, the online file-sharing sites have built up 
vast communities of people eager to download songs, pirated copies of new 
movie releases and adult content. Within nine days of its release, 
"Spider-Man" became the most popular movie downloaded from KaZaa, according 
to Redshift Research, a Belmont, Mass. firm that follows the peer-to-peer 
industry.
       At the same time, the file-sharing sites are trying to be known as 
places where independent creative artists can distribute their works, a 
strategy calculated to help them stay alive if the U.S. courts rule against 
them.
       "I'm not saying they're going to succeed," said P.J. McNealy, 
digital music analyst with Gartner's G2. "But there are continued efforts 
to find a legitimate model for P2P."

TARGETING THE INDIES
       The Grokster deal with FileFreedom, a Charlottesville, Va., 
advertising technology firm that develops personalization and community 
features for P2P networks, is a step in that direction.
       Using the FileFreedom technology copyright owners  be they software 
developers, photographers or musicians  would pay Grokster about $10 to 
register content. They would then be able to market the work to Grokster 
users based on age, gender, zip code and personal tastes.
       The content owner could offer a targeted user a free download, sell 
merchandise or promote live appearances via e-mail.
       "We expect that a lot of small independent record labels will take 
advantage of it, as well as independent musicians, authors, filmmakers and 
game developers" said Grokster spokesman Henry Wilson. "We are anticipating 
that it will add revenues, but, more importantly, it will enable 
independent artists to effectively promote and distribute their creative 
work."
       "It's a way to bring authorized content into the file-sharing 
system," said Wayne Rosso, marketing executive at FileFreedom.
       It's also a way to bring more revenue  the latest move by 
file-swapping networks to try to profit from the millions of users 
downloading songs and videos. Almost all of the P2P networks piggyback ad 
software, called "adware" or "spyware" into their programs. The result is 
users who download their technology can be tracked as they surf the Web or 
be hit with pop-up advertisements when they visit certain sites.
      For example, in a revenue-sharing deal with Brilliant Digital, Kazaa 
has integrated the Los Angeles software firm's 3D interface called "Altnet 
Secure" into its file-sharing program. Beginning in July, whenever users 
search for music files on KaZaa, there will be ad-sponsored links in the 
search which would offer paid downloads along with free ones.
       "There is a very big move afoot to come up with some way to 
monetize these big networks," said Matt Bailey, an analyst with Redshift 
Research. "People are trying to make the P2P services legitimate or to come 
up with some sort of real business model."

POPULARITY DRAWS ADS
       At the same time, KaZaa and other file-sharing services like 
BearShare and MusicCity have been trying to grow their advertising revenues 
by signing deals with online ad-serving firms such as DoubleClick, 
FastClick and 24/7 Media.
      Many of the ads at the P2P sites are sold for only a few cents per 
impression (an impression is counted when someone visits a page featuring 
an ad), but the impressions add up quickly. KaZaa, one of the largest 
file-sharing sites, has on average 1.5 million people logged on 
simultaneously, according to Redshift Research. Grokster recently 
registered 3 million downloads a day and in May had 1 million unique users, 
according to spokesman Wilson.
       "There's relatively good advertising performance across the board 
for the P2Ps," said Jeff Hirsch, sales and marketing executive at 
FastClick, citing the sites' "phenomenal amount of traffic volume." Asked 
for specific numbers, Hirsch would only say that FastClick works with "a 
number" of P2P networks, and he declined to estimate how much revenue is 
generated by them or how many advertising impressions are viewed by users 
each month.
       Although there's no reliable information on how big the ad market 
is for the P2P networks, it's rumored that some of the sites earn several 
million dollars a month each from selling billions of ad impressions to 
marketers.
       Yet as long as they carry legally questionable content, advertising 
analysts say the file-sharing sites will have a tough time attracting 
interest from mainstream marketers. Furthermore, even some online 
advertising firms that count the P2P networks among their clients decline 
comment about them. FastClick's Hirsch did say that "if a site is doing 
anything that's not legal they would not be on our network."
       Bailey, the Redshift Research analyst, said he feels there's only a 
"limited market" for Grokster's targeted service, but that the P2P networks 
could find significant revenue from adult content companies.
       "The producers of adult content are keen on the idea of promoting 
their content through P2P services," said Bailey. "That is more of an 
online marketplace than music."
********************
Washington Post
Copyfight Renewal -- Owners of Digital Devices Sue to Assert the Right to 
Record
By Mike Musgrove

Looking at how Hollywood has been trying to protect itself from piracy, the 
cure would seem to be simple: Just change nearly everything about how 
consumer electronics work.

While shoppers clamor for CD burners, MP3 players and digital video 
recorders, movie studios and record labels have been urging consumer 
electronics makers and software developers to alter these devices to keep 
movies, TV shows and records from being duplicated across the Internet. 
Studios and labels have also asked Congress to pass laws requiring 
manufacturers to put locks on these and other gadgets that would stop 
unauthorized copies.

This conflict is shaping up to be one of the tech-policy battlegrounds of 
the year, as consumers, manufacturers and entertainment companies keep 
butting heads, sometimes winding up in court as a result.

Yesterday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed suit on behalf of five 
owners of ReplayTV personal video recorders against a lineup of 
entertainment companies in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. The suit 
asks the court to rule that owners of these digital recorders, which store 
TV broadcasts on internal hard drives, have the right to record shows, skip 
commercials and move recorded content to other devices. It also asks the 
court to forbid SonicBlue Inc. from downgrading the capability of ReplayTV 
boxes it has already sold.

The entertainment industry defendants in that case filed their own suit 
against ReplayTV in the same court last October. They alleged that Replay's 
products infringe on their copyrights by automatically stripping ads from 
recordings, then letting users share those ad-free copies with other Replay 
owners.

These cases, and most other copyright conflicts, hinge on the idea of "fair 
use" -- the concept that copyright holders' control over their work must 
allow exceptions for some noncommercial uses. But the fair-use rights of 
consumers have never been codified.

That wasn't particularly necessary in the pre-digital age, because the 
copying technology available then had built-in limits. A videotaped copy of 
a videotaped copy of "The Osbournes," after all, looks noticeably fuzzier. 
But digital gadgets such as a ReplayTV recorder could enable consumers to 
make and distribute unlimited, perfect copies of MTV's hit series.

ReplayTV boxes are not programmed to differentiate fair-use copying and 
piracy. And while buyers of these recorders may have assumed they have the 
right to skip commercials or watch shows whenever and wherever they want 
to, some broadcasters say the rules need to be changed for digital recordings.

Turner Broadcasting CEO Jamie Kellner recently created a stir when he told 
Cableworld magazine that Replay and TiVo owners who skip commercials are 
breaking an implicit contract between network broadcasters and viewers. As 
such, they're stealing programming by leaving networks no way to cover 
their costs.

From that point of view, the consumer electronics industry is building a 
nation of thieves.

The controversies surrounding personal video recorders apply in some way or 
other to just about every other new class of digital gadget used for 
playing or recording copyrighted content.

And those are precisely the gadgets that have remained popular during the 
economic downturn. For instance, computer sales have stalled, but sales of 
MP3 digital-music players will increase 32 percent this year over 2001, 
according to the Consumer Electronics Association. Both Apple and Gateway 
have based ad campaigns on the popularity of digital music.

Hollywood's fear is that the real use for all this digital technology is 
piracy, and it's desperate to avoid another Napster experience.

"We need to get a reasonably secure environment before 50 million Americans 
get used to downloading their movies for free," said Preston Padden, 
executive vice president at Walt Disney Co.

The entertainment industry has backed a bill introduced by Sen. Ernest F. 
Hollings (D-S.C.) that would require all computers and nearly all 
electronic devices to come with software or hardware that would stop 
consumers from making unauthorized copies of copyrighted material.

No program or circuit that would do this has been proven to work yet, and 
tech companies have been quick and adamant in warning that such a bill 
would result in products that nobody wants to buy -- if not an outright end 
to technological innovation.

"The bill is so restrictive and so absurd, it's hard to believe how an 
electronics industry would exist" if it passed, said Andy Wolfe, the chief 
technology officer of SonicBlue. The company makes not only the ReplayTV 
recorders named in the October suit but also Rio MP3 players -- the target 
of an earlier, unsuccessful suit by the recording industry.

Attempts to bring manufacturers and entertainment firms together to develop 
broad copy-protection standards have yet to get very far. The Secure 
Digital Music Initiative, a project led by major record labels to stop 
online music sharing, ground to a halt after two years of work. On Monday, 
representatives of movie studios and consumer electronics manufacturers, 
who were supposed to issue a report on how to protect digital-television 
broadcasts from Internet piracy, could only agree on the basic outlines of 
any technological solution.

If manufacturers can find ways to put restrictions on the next wave of MP3 
players or DVD recorders, they may face yet another problem: Nearly every 
time a new copy-protection technology comes along, hackers break it.

One of the few products of the Secure Digital Music Initiative, for 
instance, was a system of "watermarks" on CDs that would contain 
copy-protection instructions for future digital recorders would detect and 
follow. Soon after the proposed technology was posted on the Web in the 
fall of 2000, a team of computer scientists stripped the sample audio clip 
of its protective watermark.

More recently, Sony Music tried using copy-prevention technology on audio 
CD releases in Europe that made them unplayable and uncopyable on 
computers. The word soon spread of a low-cost way to defeat this layer of 
protection: Take a black magic marker to part of the CD's underside.

Computer security experts say this problem will always exist.

"You're trying to make water not wet," said Bruce Schneier, founder and 
chief technology officer of Counterpane Internet Security Inc. "The natural 
law of cyberspace is that bits are copyable."

The software industry has its own experience with this. "We've had to 
grapple with this problem for years," said Robert Holleyman, president and 
chief executive officer of the Business Software Alliance, a trade group 
that lobbies for the prosecution of software pirates.

According to the BSA, the software industry loses $11 billion a year to 
software pirates. "If there was a single, one-size-fits-all solution to 
this problem, we'd be all for it," said Holleyman.
**********************
Associated Press
Man Remains Jailed Over Web Postings
Thu Jun 6, 2:36 PM ET

SEATTLE (AP) - A 70-year-old man has been in jail for more than three 
months for refusing to delete from his Web site addresses and other 
personal data of employees at the retirement home that evicted him.


The jailing of Paul Trummel, a native of England who moved to the United 
States in 1985, has drawn fire from national and international writers 
groups that support his First Amendment claims.

"Our concern is that he's being punished for speech on the Internet that 
should be protected," said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the 
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in Washington, D.C.

Other groups that have questioned the jailing include the National Union of 
Journalists in London and Reporters Sans Frontieres of France.

Trummel was jailed indefinitely on Feb. 27 for violating an anti-harassment 
order by King County Superior Court Judge James A. Doerty. Doerty ruled in 
April 2001 that Trummel had been abusive and stalked residents and 
administrators at Council House, a low-income retirement home in Seattle.

Doerty ordered Trummel to remove from his Web site the home phone numbers, 
addresses and other personal data on employees at Council House, and 
imposed fines of $100 a day for failing to comply.

Trummel also was ordered to remove a picture making administrator Stephen 
Mitchell resemble Osama bin Laden (news - web sites).

Council House managers and some residents say Trummel is delusional, 
obsessive and inflammatory. He was evicted last year, partly because of his 
Web site and newsletter Disconnections, a takeoff on the center's official 
publication, Connections.

Last week Doerty limited Trummel's phone privileges, saying he was still 
harassing residents and staff members, and he was placed in solitary 
confinement. His incarceration is set for court review June 17.
********************
New York Times
Security Hole Found in KaZaA File-Sharing Service

Users of KaZaA, a popular Internet service for sharing music files, 
frequently expose personal files on their computers by misconfiguring the 
program, according to a study by two researchers at HP Labs.

The study, which was published on Hewlett-Packard's Web site on Wednesday, 
reveals that the peer-to-peer programs, which are wildly popular for 
sharing music files, software and, increasingly, video files, can also pose 
a serious threat to computer privacy. KaZaA, a product of Sharman Networks, 
is currently the most widely used of the services. It is used by an average 
of two million people at any time.

The researchers, Nathaniel S. Good, a computer scientist at the Information 
Dynamics Lab at HP Labs, which is Hewlett-Packard's central research 
organization, and Aaron J. Krekelberg, a computer scientist at the 
University of Minnesota, found that a significant percentage of KaZaA users 
have accidentally or unknowingly allowed private files like e-mail and 
financial documents to be shared with the global Internet.

The researchers said the flaw exposed a basic vulnerability that had been 
frequently ignored by advanced computer security researchers. "You can have 
the most secure network in the world," Mr. Good said, "but if it's prone to 
user errors it will undermine the basic security of the system."

The paper raised the second damaging privacy issue that has confronted 
KaZaA's file-sharing service recently. In April, the KaZaA network faced 
criticism when it was disclosed that its free file-sharing program included 
a second program that could make its users participants in a paid 
file-sharing network.

Critics said the inclusion of the additional program had not been 
disclosed, and some referred to it as "sneakware." The company responded by 
saying it would not activate any network without users' permission, and 
noted that people would still be able to exchange files for free.

Mr. Good said he had discovered the new security flaw while setting up the 
computer of a friend who was a computer novice. "I realized he was sharing 
everything on his hard disk," he said.

Initially he assumed that the KaZaA software developers would quickly 
correct the problem. However, several months later he found that the 
problem had grown worse.

The two researchers began to run automated programs that would use the 
KaZaA software to search for files that store mail for the Microsoft 
Outlook Express electronic mail program. They assumed that no KaZaA user 
would intentionally share this kind of a file.

A total of 443 searches during a 12- hour period revealed that 
unintentional file sharing is common on the KaZaA network: 61 percent of 
the searches performed in the test found at least one electronic mail file. 
By the end of the 12-hour period the researchers had identified 156 users 
whose e-mail files were public.

Mr. Good said the researchers did not download the files for fear of 
violating computer crime laws.

The researchers were also able to determine cases in which users exposed 
word processing and financial software files, as well as the cache showing 
what Web sites they had visited. The Hewlett-Packard researchers, who are 
experts in the area of computer usability, said they found shortcomings in 
the KaZaA software that made it easy for users to configure their software 
improperly and unknowingly share private information.

The researchers performed a simple usability study and discovered only 2 of 
their 12 research subjects  who were experienced computer users  were able 
to determine correctly which folders and files should be shared.

A spokeswoman for KaZaA, Kelly Larabee, said the company was investigating 
the flaws raised in the Hewlett-Packard paper.

"At minimum, we will enhance our efforts to educate users about protecting 
their data and using shared folders only for material they choose to 
share," she said.
********************
Los Angeles Times
Reeled In by a Spoof, Chinese Daily Shrugs Off Its Capitol Error
By HENRY CHU

BEIJING -- A gaffe by China's usually staid state-run media has left a 
popular newspaper here with onion on its face.

Readers of the Beijing Evening News, one of the capital's 
largest-circulation newspapers, learned this week that the U.S. Congress 
had threatened to move out of Washington unless a fancy new Capitol was built.

"Don't get us wrong. We actually love the dilapidated [old] building," 
House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) was quoted as saying. "But the 
cruel reality is, it's no longer suitable for use by a world-class 
legislature. Its contours are ugly, there's no room to maneuver, there 
aren't enough bathrooms, and let's not even talk about the parking."

If a new building wasn't erected, the article said, lawmakers were prepared 
to pack up and move to Memphis, Tenn., or Charlotte, N.C.

The story seems newsworthy enough. Trouble is, it was lifted straight from 
the Onion, a satirical "news" publication based in New York that has caused 
countless American readers to double over with laughter at its weekly 
spoofs on current events.

Its story on the Capitol appeared in its May 29 edition, alongside such 
headlines as "Sexual Tension Between Arafat, Sharon Reaches Breaking Point" 
and "Man Blames Hangover on Everything But How Much He Drank."

A writer for the Beijing Evening News apparently picked up the item from 
the Internet, reworked the opening paragraphs and submitted it to his 
editors, who then published it Monday as a news story, without citing a source.

Nobody, perhaps not even the reporter, appeared to realize that it was a joke.

Yu Bin, the editor in charge of international news, acknowledged Thursday 
that he had no idea where the writer, Huang Ke, originally got the story. 
Yu said he would tell Huang to "be more careful next time."

But he adamantly ruled out a correction and grew slightly obstreperous when 
pressed to comment on the article's total lack of truth.

"How do you know whether or not we checked the source before we published 
the story?" Yu demanded in a phone interview. "How can you prove it's not 
correct? Is it incorrect just because you say it is?"

For the record, John Feehery, Hastert's spokesman, said the congressman 
never made the remarks attributed to him.

"He likes the Capitol just fine," Feehery said.

However, the office of House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) 
did not respond to a request Thursday for comment. Gephardt was alleged to 
have said, "Look at the British Parliament. Look at the Vatican.... Without 
modern facilities, they've been having big problems attracting top talent."

The Onion parody featured an architect's rendering of a proposed futuristic 
Capitol complete with a retractable dome, a "Dancing Waters fountain" and 
"55 more luxury boxes than the current building." The Beijing paper 
reproduced the entire illustration without crediting the Onion. There 
wasn't even a caption explaining what the drawing was.

Robert Siegel, editor in chief of the Onion, which prides itself as 
"America's finest news source," said he was amazed at the Chinese paper's 
gullibility.

"Wow, even journalists now believe everything they read," Siegel said from 
his home in New York. "If I were a reporter in Beijing and found an item 
like that ... I might want to follow up and check my sources. Readers fall 
for that kind of thing all the time, and maybe I was naive, but I thought 
reporters would be smarter."

That the Beijing Evening News cribbed the Onion article is actually not so 
surprising in a land where movies, pop albums and books are pirated and 
sold on the streets.

Though still under the thumb of the government, the media in China have 
become more freewheeling and more competitive, forced to duke it out for 
market share and turn a profit.

The Beijing Evening News, which boasts a circulation of about 1 million, is 
fighting off challenges from a raft of other newspapers and magazines.

Many papers now rely on contract freelancers to provide all sorts of 
content. This has given rise to a slew of young, Internet-savvy, 
English-speaking writers who freely lift stuff from the Web and submit it 
to editors who adopt a "don't ask, don't tell" attitude toward the 
material's origins.

One man who used to contribute pieces to a financial publication--he asked 
not to be identified--said he would simply take copy from British and U.S. 
news services and translate it into Chinese.

Huang, the author of the Beijing Evening News article on the unloved U.S. 
Capitol, couldn't be reached for comment Thursday.

He or she--the name is androgynous and very likely a pseudonym--appears not 
to be one of the paper's longtime contributors. An electronic archive 
search on the paper's Web site yielded Huang's byline on only two stories 
in the last two years.

Both appeared in Monday's edition. One was the Onion rip-off. The other, on 
the same page, was an investigative piece about the lack of security 
screening for most private charter flights in the U.S.

But a little checking showed that this story too was cribbed: It was a 
direct translation of a front-page article from Sunday's Washington Post.
********************
Washington Post
Forman Pushes E-gov into Homeland Security Arena


Nick Wakeman
Washington Technology
Thursday, June 6, 2002; 4:36 PM


The Bush administration is working on e-gov-related homeland security 
initiatives that will concentrate on architecture and on beginning pilot 
projects that can push information integration.

The idea of information integration goes beyond sharing information to 
getting information systems to work together to glean intelligence from 
various databases, said Mark Forman, the e-gov point man at the Office of 
Management and Budget, said June 5 at the Federation of Government 
Information Processing Councils' conference in New Orleans.

Forman said he and Steve Cooper, the chief information officer of the 
Office of Homeland Security, are working together on identifying projects.

The architecture or foundation projects will look at the processes needed 
for sharing and analyzing information across agencies and between state, 
local and federal agencies, Forman said.

The pilot projects will focus on known gaps in systems and processes and on 
deploying a solution to address the gap in 60 to 120 days, he said. The 
pilots should be identified by the end of the fiscal year.

Forman and Cooper also are working on the information-sharing strategy that 
will be part of the homeland security strategy to be released by Tom Ridge 
in early July. The goal of the information sharing strategy will be to 
improve response time and to improve the quality of decision-making, Forman 
said.

The challenge is a great one, he said. "In some cases, the cycle time for 
decisions has to drop down to minutes or hours, and we just aren't used to 
that," Forman said. "Doing architecture analysis is hard. It is not just 
improving processes, but defining the processes."
*******************
Washington Post
VeriSign Slapped With Third Lawsuit Over Marketing



Reuters
Thursday, June 6, 2002; 4:58 PM


SAN FRANCISCODomain name registrar Go Daddy Software Inc. said Thursday it 
is suing VeriSign Inc. , the fourth complaint against the market leader for 
allegedly deceiving rivals' customers into transferring their business.

The latest lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court in Phoenix, accuses 
VeriSign of false and deceptive advertising, interference with customer 
relationships, misappropriation of trade secrets and consumer fraud, 
according to Scottsdale, Arizona-based Go Daddy.

At issue are letters VeriSign is sending to people labeled "Domain Name 
Expiration Notices" that urge recipients to return the forms, along with 
$29 per domain, or risk losing their domains, Go Daddy said.

However, the "reply by" dates on the forms have no correlation to the 
expiration of the domains, Go Daddy said. Customers who replied to the 
forms were paying $29 instead of $8.95 per domain they had been paying to 
Go Daddy, the company added.

The non-profit California Consumer Action Network asked a court in San 
Diego to stop VeriSign's direct marketing campaign in late March.

After BulkRegister filed a lawsuit in May, a Maryland judge ordered 
VeriSign to stop sending the letters to BulkRegister customers.

Later that month, a Los Angeles law firm filed its own lawsuit against 
VeriSign seeking class action status.

A VeriSign spokesman said the Mountain View, California-based company does 
not comment on ongoing litigation.

The company also faces a handful of lawsuits seeking class action status 
that accuse the company of inflating its stock price and misleading 
investors about organic revenue growth.
*********************
Los Angeles Times
Liberties Group Sues Studios Over Consumers' Use of Digital Devices
By JON HEALEY
TIMES STAFF WRITER

June 7 2002

A civil-liberties group sued the major Hollywood studios and television 
networks Thursday in a bid to define consumers' TV-recording rights for the 
digital age.

In a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, the Electronic 
Frontier Foundation asked a federal judge to declare that consumers can use 
digital recorders to watch shows after they are broadcast, skip all 
commercials, transmit recordings to members of their households and send 
copies of free TV broadcasts to anyone on the Internet as long as they are 
not compensated.

The complaint is a counterpunch to a copyright-infringement lawsuit that 28 
studios and networks filed against Sonicblue Inc. and its latest digital 
video recorder, the ReplayTV 4000. In fact, the foundation wants the two 
cases merged. Like other manufacturers' "personal video recorders," the 
ReplayTV 4000 stores TV programs on a hard drive instead of videotape. 
Unlike its competitors, however, the ReplayTV 4000 can skip commercials 
automatically when playing back a show, and it can beam shows to other 
ReplayTV 4000s--two features that enable users to violate copyrights, the 
entertainment companies say.

Lawyers for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which focuses on consumer 
rights in cyberspace, accused the entertainment industry of using the 
Sonicblue lawsuit to mount an indirect attack on consumers. To win their 
case, the entertainment companies must prove that consumers don't have the 
right to skip commercials or shift copies of their recordings to other 
devices, said Fred von Lohmann, the foundation's senior intellectual 
property attorney.

Consumers "should at least have the right to stand up in court and defend 
their own activities," he said.

Representatives of the studios and networks said the foundation's action 
distorted the nature of their lawsuit against Sonicblue.

"We have never indicated any desire or intent to bring legal action against 
individual consumers for use of this device," the companies said in a joint 
statement.

Lawyer Robert M. Schwartz, a partner at O'Melveny & Myers who represents 
the studios, said: "We will show to the court that this device is designed 
to directly infringe our copyrights and do other things that aren't fair 
use. We don't have to show that individual users are acting improperly."

The foundation brought its lawsuit on behalf of five ReplayTV 4000 owners 
who say they use their recorders to limit the commercials their children 
see, move recordings around their home and even send shows to their 
laptops--a feature not designed or supported by Sonicblue.

Legal experts said the complaint would not move forward unless the five 
consumers can show they were at imminent risk of being sued by the studios 
and networks for copyright infringement.

Lawyers for the foundation said they were simply trying to ensure that 
consumers could use digital recorders to do things they had grown 
accustomed to doing with their VCRs. But other copyright lawyers said the 
legal waters were not that clear, particularly when it comes to sending 
copies of shows from device to device.

In a landmark 1984 opinion, the Supreme Court rejected the studios' legal 
challenge to Sony Corp.'s Betamax VCR and ruled that consumers could record 
programs for later viewing. But the case did not consider whether consumers 
could copy a program and send it over the Internet, said J.D. Harriman, a 
copyright attorney at Coudert Bros. in Los Angeles.

Nor have the courts addressed whether consumers have the right to skip 
commercials. But Maureen Dorney, a partner at the law firm Gray Cary in 
Palo Alto, said the studios would be hard pressed to prove consumers were 
"doing something wrongful because they get up and go to the bathroom."

"It's not about the rights of consumers; it's about the unlawful conduct of 
the manufacturer of this box," Schwartz responded. "The manufacturer of 
this box does not have the right to sell a device that electronically and 
instantly bypasses the commercials."

Even if the foundation's complaint is thrown out, observers agreed, the 
Sonicblue case could influence what consumers can do with the new digital 
recorders.

"This case has the potential for making some important law," Dorney said.
*******************
Government Computer News
New department could reshape federal data sharing

By William Jackson
GCN Staff


The president's proposed Homeland Security Department could set new rules 
for interagency information sharing, speakers said today at a hearing of 
the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Technology and Procurement Policy.

The need to share information more efficiently has become a centerpiece of 
the administration's quest for homeland security. Agency officials 
testifying today cited the lack of clearly defined IT requirements as a key 
barrier to sharing information. Agencies and the administration have been 
criticized because so many details about the Sept. 11 terrorists and their 
plans were never brought together to form a clear picture.

George H. Bohlinger, executive associate commissioner for management at the 
Immigration and Naturalization Service, said many companies see the 
government "as an unresponsive bureaucracy" that fails to take advantage of 
available technology.

"I don't think the problem at this point is in procurement," said Mark 
Forman, the Office of Management and Budget's associate director for IT and 
e-government. "I think the problem is in the requirements area." Until 
missions and roles are clearly identified, he said, agencies do not know 
what technology is needed to fulfill them.

Rep. Jim Turner (D-Texas) said many companies run into a dead end because 
the current Office of Homeland Security lacks clear authority. The new 
department could help resolve that, he said.

Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), a member of the Select Intelligence Committee 
who was briefed at the White House today about the president's plans, said 
the new department would not be a magic bullet but an enabler for 
information sharing.

"This topic is absolutely essential to the homeland security effort," she 
said. "This is a critical piece."
******************
MSNBC
Public or Private?
 Book Review: The struggle for control of the Internet is a modern version 
of the range war, says David Bollier

By Peter McGrath
NEWSWEEK

June 10 issue  It's almost human nature: if you're allowed the use of 
something for enough time, you begin to think you have a right to it, even 
that you own it. Take broadcast television. Its signals travel by means of 
the electromagnetic spectrum, specifically that segment known colloquially 
as the airwaves. The spectrum is a fact of the physical universe. Capital 
didn't create it. It can't be improved by way of adding value. It's 
inherently a public resource.
        YET BROADCASTERS TREAT it like a birthright. When in 1996 they won 
new frequencies for high-definition televisionat no chargethey were allowed 
to retain their old spectrum allotments until 2006, or until 85 percent of 
U.S. households had digital sets, whichever came later. Then they were 
supposed to give it back to the public. Don't count on it. Broadcasters 
would like to use their old spectrum for e-commerce, or resell it to 
others. "They used to rob trains in the Old West," said Sen. John McCain of 
the FCC giveaway. "Now we rob spectrum."
       The electromagnetic spectrum is a prime example of what David 
Bollier calls a "commons" in his provocative new book, "Silent Theft: The 
Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth" (260 pages. Routledge. $26). 
Historically, the word "commons" referred to real estatepublic grazing 
grounds or tidewater fisheries. Today the term describes not only land such 
as national forests, but also intangible assets like the human-gene 
sequence. Bollier argues that in case after case of a resource once held to 
belong to all, private interests are eroding public ownership. Is there oil 
in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? Let industry appropriate the land. 
Is there money to be made in manipulating the gene sequence? Let 
biotechnology firms patent it. Tension between private and public interests 
is as old as the republic, Bollier admits. "But today we live in a 
troubling new stage of this struggle that differs in scope and ferocity 
from previous ones."
        Nowhere is this trend more apparent than with the Internet, says 
Bollier: "Never has there been a commons as big, robust and socially 
creative." Yet companies like Microsoft seek to impose proprietary 
technical standards for Internet access while firms like AOL try to enclose 
the Web experience within digital walls that resemble those of a shopping 
mall. And why not? asks Silicon Valley. Its dominant view is that 
"government" and "innovation" are mutually exclusive terms.
       Against this is an inconvenient fact: private companies did nothing 
to invent the Internet. It was the product of a partnership between 
universities and the Feds. The process employed campus-based and 
taxpayer-funded computer scientistswith their professional ethic of open 
access to researchto design the system. As a result, writes Bollier, the 
Net exhibits all the qualities of a commons. Its designers and end-users 
were the same people. They developed technical standards that were open to 
all. And they thought of themselves as a community based on no-cost access 
to the network. Business hardly noticed. There was no money in a 
bare-bones, text-based medium of exchange.
        Then came the World Wide Web. It adapted the Internet to the 
graphical-user interfaces pioneered by the Macintosh operating system and 
universalized by Win-dows. Business awoke. The Internet as a visual medium: 
that had commercial potential. A tiny company called Netscapenot the Raptor 
from Redmondbegan privatizing the Web by tweaking the government-supported 
Mosaic browser just enough for the upstart plausibly to claim it had made a 
new product. Then Microsoft fought back. Everything that has happened 
since, both in the marketplace and in court, has been a modern range war, 
echoing the 19th-century struggle between ranchers and farmers over who had 
the right to appropriate public property.
      The Internet is only one place where public goes private. Take the 
drug business. Bollier cites the cancer-treatment drug Taxol, developed 
with federal funds and derived from trees found on federal lands, but 
appropriated by Bristol-Myers Squibb because it had the $1 billion needed 
to bring Taxol to market. Then there's the attempt to patent and thus 
privatize information about the human-gene sequence. If anything is by 
nature public information, it's the genetic code by which we exist. But 
business doesn't see it that way.
        Bollier can be tendentious. He goes out of his way to endorse 
market forces, but you can tell his heart isn't really in it. He dislikes 
privatization so much that he deplores the corporatization of stadium names 
(Enron Field in Houston) equally with Microsoft's capture of the Internetas 
though the Houston Astros weren't a corporation to begin with. Still, 
Bollier raises issues that almost nobody wants to talk about anymore. If 
he's not always right, he's always on target.
***********************
MSNBC
Analyzer gets 18-month jail term
Sentence increased from community service by appeals court
By Bob Sullivan

June 6  The Israeli teen-ager who sent U.S. government security experts on 
a global dragnet four years ago was sentenced Wednesday to 18 months in 
jail  a big increase over the 6 months community service he first received. 
Ehud Tenebaum's successful attacks on the Pentagon and other government 
computers were initially viewed as potential acts of cyberwar by a foreign 
government  agents scrambled for a month as part of operation "Solar 
Sunrise," but were red-faced when the trail led to two California 
teen-agers and Tenebaum.
       IT WAS LABELED "the most organized and systematic attack the 
Pentagon has seen to date" at the time  until computer forensics led 
investigators to two California teen-agers and an Israeli hacker who called 
himself "Analyzer."
       "Analyzer"  really Tenebaum, who was 18 then  masterminded a series 
of high-profile break-ins of systems at the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology, NASA, the FBI, the U.S. Air Force, and the U.S. Department of 
Defense. He was nabbed by Israeli officials a month after breaking into the 
Pentagon computers and has faced lengthy legal proceedings ever since. 
Israel never considered extraditing him to the United States to face trial 
there.
       Using a combination of plea bargaining and popular sympathy  even 
then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu complimented Tenebaum's computer 
skills after his arrest  Tenebaum managed to escape initially with only 6 
months of community service, one year's probation, and a fine.
       "A day after [the first] verdict, he was a hero here in the biggest 
papers," said Israeli computer security expert Boaz Guttman. "Most of the 
people had arrived at the conclusion that he escaped from jail."
       The Israeli government asked the appeals court to overrule the 
earlier ruling by Kfar Saba Magistrate's Court, saying it was too lenient. 
U.S. authorities were pushing for jail time, Guttman said.
      And jail time Tenebaum now has. Wednesday, the Tel Aviv District 
Court sentenced him to 18 months in jail, one year of supervised probation 
and a stiff fine. Israeli computer security expert Boaz Guttman lauded the 
stricter sentence, saying it sent the right message to other would-be hackers.
       Many of the government systems Tenebaum broke into were insecure, 
computer experts later revealed. Several just hadn't been updated with the 
latest software patches.
       Tenebaum still can appeal to Israel's Supreme Court. If he doesn't, 
he will enter an Israeli jail on June 18.
**************************
Euromedia.net
Half of Germans don't want internet access
05/06/2002  Editor: Tamsin McMahon

About half of Germans don't have, or want, access to the internet, 
especially the elderly, the poor and those with a low level of education, 
the results of a new telephone poll show.

The poll, conducted by eMind@emnid, the internet research department of TNS 
EMNID.

By May there were 26.7m German internet users older that 13, about 3m users 
more than in the previous year. But the proportion of those who planned to 
access the internet dropped to 8.2 per cent.

People who don't want internet access tend to be significant older and 
mainly female, with a low level of education and with a low income, the 
poll found. Most non-users live in urban areas and in the new federal states.

With a 37 per cent internet penetration rate, East Germany has fallen 
behind West Germany with a 43 per cent rate. That digital gap extends to 
the old federal states in general, eMind@emnid said.

The area stretching from Schleswig-Holstein to Bavaria had a high number of 
internet users, while those in Northrhine-Westfalia, Rhineland-Pfalz and 
Saarland tend to refuse internet access.

"The digital gap in Germany is no purely social problem," said IBM CEO 
Erwin Staudt who chairs the Initiative D21.

"The high rate of internet- abstainers' is an obstacle to economic growth 
and to a reduction of the unemployment rate. Political and economic efforts 
must tackle this problem together."

The poll also found that the number of internet abstainers in some federal 
states is increasing.

Last year, Berlin was the stronghold of internet users at a rate of 45 per 
cent, a rate that was expected to continue growing.

However, it was the number of non-users that rose nearly six percentage 
points in Berlin, which lost its top spot to Frankfurt. The German 
financial metropolis has an internet penetration rate of 53 per cent.

Dresden, Stuttgart and Munich came next with rates of between 50 and 51 per 
cent.

Dortmund leads list of places with the most internet abstainers at a rate 
of 58 per cent, followed by Leipzig at 56 per cent and Essen at 53 per cent.

According to the Semiometrie, people with no internet access are rather 
traditional and more interested in social and material issues. To them, 
family and religion play a major role. On the other hand, internet users 
are more oriented towards adventure, pleasure and competition.

Low internet use is mainly due to high costs, lack of equipment and 
instruction, and little group-specific content.

Internet users are also experiencing their own digital divide: between 
broadband and dial-up users, the poll found.

Broadband users tend to be those with a higher income who live in big 
cities in the western part of Germany. The also seem to spend more time 
online than their narrowband counterparts .
e-government is also very popular among the Germans, the poll says, as 87 
per cent of those surveyed rated virtual city halls as attractive. The 
German government plans to put most public services online by 2005.
********************
Euromedia.net
Government in Spain promises internet for all by 2004
04/06/2002  Editor: Bobby Mohanty

The Spanish Minister for Science and Technology, Anna Birules, confirmed 
that internet access is to be available to all Spanish citizens by 2004.

This would put internet access on par with universal telecoms access. Under 
this plan, the government expects to upgrade more than 255,000 rural 
telephone lines, called TRAC, that can't currently provide internet access.

According to government estimates, about 70 per cent of the rural telecoms 
network will be able to connect to the internet by end of next year.

The government has recently faced criticism in Parliament across party 
lines for delays in implementing projects under its ambitious Information 
Society plan.

Last year, only 28 per cent of Spanish adults connected to the internet. 
That number rose to 70 per cent for companies and organisations, an 
increase of 20 percentage points compared to 2000. The Minister dismissed 
these numbers as being clearly insufficient.

On the other hand, ADSL users continue to grow in Spain. There are more 
than 620,000 subscribers, according to latest figures. Telefonica alone 
accounted for more than 500,000. Adding those who connect to the internet 
over cable systems, there are an estimated 800,000 broadband users in Spain.
*********************
Euromedia.net
Turkish internet law faces strong opposition
29/05/2002  Editor: Tamsin McMahon
Print this article | Email this article to a friend

A new Turkish law that groups the internet under the same controls as the 
rest of the country's media are facing harsh criticism from users, service 
providers and the European Union.

Turkey's new broadcast law says ISPs could be face fines up to $195,000 
(E210,000) for any libelous comments or "lying news" published on the web. 
As part of the new legislation, websites may have to be officially 
registered and submit their material to authorities for approval.

Until recently, the internet has been exempt from the same tough penalties 
as newspapers and broadcasters, which has allowed websites to criticise the 
government and publish news their mainstream media colleagues couldn't.

Service providers and web publishers say they're worried the new 
regulations, which give the Supreme Radio and Television Board control over 
the internet, will kill Turkey's booming online community.

"There's not going to be a certain direction, no freedom of speech and this 
is going to impact the local content and local hosting services and 
eventually the whole internet sector," Savas Unsal, managing director of 
the country's biggest ISP, Superonline, told the BBC. "They might easily 
put me and my chairman out of business."

Fikret Ilkiz, lawyer for Turkish daily paper Cumhuriyet criticised the new 
law for being to general, leaving the door open for authorities to 
prosecute ISPs for comments written in chatrooms.

"The way the law is now, it will be defined by many court cases," he said. 
"For now, there is great uncertainty. No one knows what is legal and what 
is not. It is chaos."

But the country's Minister of Transport and Communications, Oktay Vural, 
said the law isn't meant to be restrictive, only to add a measure of 
regulation to the internet. " We cannot be an eye in the chatrooms; that is 
not the aim of that law."

However, Turkey's Constitutional Court may opt to repeal the law after 
pressure from the European Union and Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, 
who said the legislation violated the constitution.
*********************
Nando Times
Eight people injected with silicon chips

(June 7, 2002 11:35 a.m. EDT) - Eight people recently have been injected 
with silicon chips, making them scannable just like a jar of peanut butter 
in the supermarket checkout line.

The miniature devices, about the size of a grain of rice, were developed by 
a Florida company. They will be targeted to families of Alzheimer's 
patients - one of the fastest-growing groups in American society - as well 
as others who have complicated medical histories. "It's a safety 
precaution," explained Nate Isaacson. The retired building contractor 
entered his Fort Lauderdale doctor's office on May 10 as an 83-year-old 
with Alzheimer's.

He left it a cyborg, a man who is also a little bit of a computer.

The chip was put in Isaacson's upper back, effectively invisible unless a 
hand-held scanner is waved over it. The scanner uses a radio frequency to 
energize the dormant chip, which then transmits a signal containing an 
identification number. Information about Isaacson is cross-referenced under 
that number in a central computer registry.

Emergency room personnel, for instance, could find out who Isaacson is and 
where he lives. They'd know that he is prone to forgetfulness, that he has 
a pacemaker and is allergic to penicillin.

"You never know what's going to happen when you go out the door," said 
Isaacson's wife, Micki. "Should something happen, he's never going to 
remember those things."

Applied Digital Solutions Inc., the maker of what it calls the VeriChip, 
says that it will soon have a prototype of a much more complex device, one 
that is able to receive GPS satellite signals and transmit a person's 
location.

It's a prospect deeply unsettling to privacy advocates, no matter how 
voluntary the process may initially appear.

"Who gets to decide who gets chipped?" asked Marc Rotenberg, executive 
director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "Parents will decide 
that their kids should be implanted, or maybe their own aging parents. It's 
an easier way to manage someone, like putting a leash on a pet."

Applied Digital, which says it has a waiting list of 4,000 to 5,000 people 
who want a VeriChip, plans to operate a "chipmobile" that visits Florida 
senior citizen's centers. An estimated 4 million people in the United 
States have Alzheimer's, with more than 10 percent of them in Florida.

Jeffrey and Leslie Jacobs and their teenage son Derek, whose "chipping" was 
a national media event, don't have problems with dementia. The Boca Raton, 
Fla., family has a mixture of ailments and interests: Jeffrey has been 
treated for Hodgkin's disease and suffers from other conditions for which 
he takes 16 medications, while Derek is allergic to certain antibiotics. 
Mostly, though, he's a computer buff who considers the procedure nifty. As 
for Leslie, she's merely hoping to feel more secure in an insecure world.

A third group who had the simple outpatient procedure done are executives 
of Applied Digital, a publicly traded company based in Palm Beach. Even 
their publicist did it.

Getting chipped is easy. Making it more useful than a piece of body art 
will be harder.

"There are a lot of practical issues here, as well as ethical and privacy 
issues," said Mark Pafford, associate executive director of the Alzheimer's 
Association's Southeast Florida chapter. "If it were me, I would use 
something tried and proven, like a ID bracelet or a necklace that has an 
800 number. This VeriChip seems like it would inhibit someone being 
returned home in a timely fashion. Who knows how to look under someone's 
skin?"

Applied Digital says that nearly all the major hospitals in the West Palm 
Beach area will be equipped with the scanners. Yet St. Mary's Medical 
Center, a major trauma center approached at random by a reporter, said no 
one had contacted that hospital.

Isaacson's family says he has a bracelet. He also has a wallet with an ID.

"The VeriChip is more of a 'God forbid,'" said Sherry Gottlieb, Isaacson's 
daughter. "You feel you have to have it, but hope you never need it."

Applied Digital is charging $200 for a chip, plus a $10 monthly fee to 
store the information. As the first patients, Isaacson and the Jacobses are 
getting their VeriChips for free, but that's the only financial 
consideration they are receiving.

Isaacson's doctor, while agreeing to perform the insertion, has some qualms 
about it. He consented to be interviewed but asked that his name not be 
revealed. While protests against the VeriChip have been minimal, neither 
the doctor nor Applied Digital are eager to see demonstrations. A few 
religious groups say the chips are "the mark of the Beast" referred to in 
the Bible.

"I think this is going to be the cutting edge of the future, because quick 
information saves lives," Isaacson's doctor said. "I get calls 24 hours a 
day informing me that a patient has had a stroke or a heart attack and is 
in the hospital. I have to go to my office, get the chart and then go to 
the hospital. All that takes time, while the patient is being treated with 
limited information."

And yet this family practitioner doesn't see himself chipping any youthful 
patients. While he believes the procedure is safe and the chip can always 
be removed, he's worried about long-term liability. "You do something to a 
young person, you may be responsible for years afterwards. He may be 
carrying this chip for 70 or 80 years."

Long before then - by the end of the year, in fact - the next generation of 
devices will be tested.

An embedded chip with GPS capabilities would be slightly larger than a 
quarter and require actual surgery to implant. Unlike the VeriChip, it also 
would require Food and Drug Administration approval. That will slow down 
its U.S. introduction.

"We believe we have solved the battery issue, which leaves the question of 
an antenna that can transmit through skin tissue," said Keith Bolton, 
Applied Digital's chief scientist. The devices will be powered by lithium 
ion batteries, which can be charged remotely from outside the body.

Applied Digital says it has already received considerable interest in the 
VeriChip from both commercial and government sources in Brazil and Mexico, 
and expects the embedded system to be big wherever there is a big threat of 
kidnapping.

The prospect of such sales is no doubt one reason Applied Digital stock, 
which traded as low as 11 cents in the last year, recently rose by over 20 
percent to about $2.40.

Corporate insiders were sellers of the stock before the recent run-up, 
which might indicate a lack of faith in the company's viability. The stock 
closed Wednesday at 89 cents, up 1 cent, on Nasdaq.

Applied Digital is heavily indebted but says it will have actual earnings 
this quarter before interest, taxes and depreciation are accounted for.
*****************
Sydney Morning Herald
Stolen moments

Online trading of unauthorised CDR recordings could spell the end of the 
bootleg industry as we have known it, reports Jon Casimir.


Do you have a hankering to hear Bob Dylan's Pittsburgh show from February 
1966? Or tapes from 1961, before he was famous? How about his rehearsal for 
an MTV Unplugged special in 1994? The unreleased February 1969 recordings 
he did with Johnny Cash? A concert from the current Love and Theft Tour? 
Then head for the Bob Dylan Boot Database. It keeps track of hundreds of 
recordings of the whiny little guy. All of them - shows, session out-takes, 
unreleased songs, press conference tapes and other career offcuts - are 
unauthorised by Dylan or his recording company. That is to say, they're 
illegal. But that's not stopping them doing the rounds of a highly 
networked, technologically literate Web community.

The Boot Database doesn't sell any of these recordings. Neither does it 
make them available for direct download. What it does is something much 
simpler, cheaper and more effective. It's a referral service, putting 
owners of bootlegs in contact with each other, nurturing a CDR trading 
circle (Compact Disc-Recordable, more formally CD-R, are discs you record 
on, or burn, once). Its core is a "Who Has Which Boot?" database, a 
searchable index of recordings cross-referenced with the people who own them.

The database user goes through a simple registration process (which 
includes providing his or her own list of bootlegs), then requests a 
recording via email. According to the site, database queries can be run 
specifying year, date and location of the recording, as well as the 
presence of other performers. A return email is sent with contact details 
of members who have the right discs. The second trader gets in touch with 
the first and bartering ensues.

"Over the past seven years," the site says, "hundreds of Dylan fans have 
contributed information about their 'unauthorised' recordings and 
volunteered to serve as contacts. The Bob Dylan Bootleg Database has 
provided thousands of referrals."

The Boot Database is not the only site providing such a service. Bob's 
Boots runs a smaller, more low-tech system, listing CDR traders for contact 
in 28 countries (including a handful in Australia). And there are plenty of 
others. If you type "Bob Dylan CDR trading" into the Google search engine, 
you'll find more than 2000 matches. And the number increases daily.

While you're there, try tapping in the name of any other major act of the 
past 40 years and you'll find that although Dylan's fans are among the most 
organised of the online communities (they are, after all, the Star Trek 
geeks of the music world - obsessive, completist, encyclopedic in their 
knowledge), trading groups exist for an amazing range of acts.

Typing in "The Beatles CDR trading" will net you more than 2360 sites to 
hunt through. Change the band name to U2 and you'll get 2200. Kiss returns 
1980 matches, Pink Floyd 1850, Prince 1600, The Rolling Stones 1190 and 
Bruce Springsteen 925, to name just a few. Local acts such as Midnight Oil, 
Silverchair, Crowded House will net 200 or 300 suggestions each. Some of 
these will lead to organised swap groups. Others are merely people listing 
their collections online and hoping other traders will stumble across them.

But let's stick with the Bob example for a while longer. Those who wish to 
research the bootlegs listed at the Boot Database before putting in 
requests can use sites such as DylanBase, which has catalogued more than 
1000 bootlegs, representing an archive of 11,000 performances of songs.

This place was set up to be "a giant bubbling information centre", full of 
set lists, reviews, comments, trading lists and other information - all 
supplied by volunteers. Its chief claim to fame is its song search engine - 
if you want to find shows only at which Dylan played Series of Dreams or 
Subterranean Homesick Blues, you can. The Bob Dylan CD & CDR Field 
Recordings Guide Of William J. Clinton offers a similar level of 
librarianship. Deep Beneath The Waves is an e-zine devoted to reviewing 
only Dylan boots. But what do you do if you're a keen Dylan fan without any 
bootlegs to trade? Well, that's been sorted out, too. Visit DylanTree, a 
site which organises what traders call "trees", a simple and effective 
model for the sharing of music.

CDR trees - which grow in many communities - work like this. A person who 
has a recording posts a notice on site about it. Anyone who wants a copy 
then signs up to the specific "tree". Two people are chosen to send blank 
discs as well as return postage to the person at the top of the tree, who 
has the original CD recording. He then burns copies of the concert and 
sends it to them. These two people then receive blank discs and postage 
from the four people on the next branch level of the tree. And so on. In 
this way, one concert can be shared among many people without anyone having 
to burn more than two copies for anyone else.

And what do you do when these blank CDs turn up in the mail and you think: 
"Gee, I wish they had cover art"? Well, Dylantree has links to a raft of 
amateur bootleg artwork sites which let users download high-quality scans 
of homemade album covers (with names, track listings and the relevant 
recording information) for laser printing. The quality of the graphic 
design is as surprising as the quality of some of the recordings.

The fact that a sub-community of artists has attached itself to the trading 
community indicates the scope and passion of the activity. There are even 
free software programs for collectors who want to keep track of their 
trading. Indeed, what is most startling about this whole business is the 
level of organisation involved, the evolution that has taken place in the 
few short years that we've had both the Net and the CD burner.

The Dylanophiles, and other groups like them, are not just networks, 
they're societies - people coming together with common purpose, common 
outlook and a well-defined moral code. At the core of that code is the 
idea, shared among all CDR trading communities, that this material should 
be shared rather than sold. Traders have managed, regardless of the law, to 
elevate themselves, at least in their own eyes, to the moral high ground. 
As long as what they're doing is not about money, they argue, then 
everything is kosher. As far as they're concerned, CDR trading is an 
expression of love for the artist, evidence of commitment.

John Mazcko, a US university student who runs Mega Superior Gold, a Ryan 
Adams site which fosters a CDR trading community for one of the hottest new 
stars of American music, says bootleg discs don't replace or compete with 
the official work of an artist. Rather, they augment it, fuelling the 
ardour among those who just can't get enough of the musicians they love.

"It may be illegal to trade," Mazcko says, "but I'm all about the music. 
I'm definitely not ripping Ryan off at all. I can guarantee that just about 
anyone who has bootlegged shows of his stuff also has the original albums."

Most trading sites have warnings not to sell or buy "field recordings" 
plastered all over them. The Dylan Database, for example, assures visitors 
that in all its time online, "not a single cent has changed hands - the 
service is strictly not-for-profit and hobby-oriented".

As no cash is flowing in either direction, and most people trading are 
likely to have bought everything the artist has offered them already, the 
traders may have a point when they argue they're not hurting anybody. Add 
to that an understanding that the kind of acts that are bootlegged are 
mostly the acts that are already successful and you have to wonder how much 
financial damage it does.

Mazcko reckons Adams has said at shows that he doesn't mind being taped and 
seeing those recordings traded. And to be fair, there are acts out there 
(none on major labels, which routinely include contract clauses to disallow 
the practice) which let fans tape concerts - check the Bands That Allow 
Taping site for proof.

But the truth is that all the good intentions and supposedly pure hearts of 
the traders don't make any of their activities less illegal. Music industry 
lawyer Shane Simpson says he has no doubt that what they do contravenes the 
copyright laws, which see no distinction between trading and selling. Under 
Australian law, anyone who performs on a recording must sign a consent 
before that recording can be released to the public - so if it ain't 
authorised, it ain't legal, whether money changes hands for it or not.

"There's no question about that," Simpson says. "Bartering, anything - it 
makes no difference. Even if it's a gift. Once you have made it available 
to someone else, you're over the line."

However, Simpson says, the question of whether CDR trading is legal really 
isn't that interesting. The interesting question, in an age where the music 
industry is paranoid about losing control of its product, is why aren't the 
CDR traders, who aren't exactly skulking in the dark corners of the online 
world, being prosecuted?

"It's a bit like home taping," he says. "No record company is going to pay 
an expensive team of lawyers to get court orders to bust down the door of 
some 14-year-old girl in Kogarah to raid her bedroom and take a CD burner. 
Who'd want the flak?

"A lot of artists treat it [trading] as honorific. It happens because so 
many people love them, and isn't that a lovely thing? Those that really 
hate it, I imagine, are put off by the expense of doing anything. I don't 
know what it would cost to run a case, but you'd want to have $100,000 in 
the kick before saying, 'This looks like a good idea'."

Even if an artist did want to try to stop the practice, he or she would be 
faced with the realisation that suing members of the fanbase for damages 
would not just be bad publicity, it wouldn't return much cash. Then there 
would be the problem of knowing where to start. CDR trading is not like 
Napster - it doesn't have a centralised point of dissemination. It's 
thousands of people in their homes. So it's not a situation where you could 
kill the head and expect the body to die.

Simpson asks: "Exactly which of the Medusa heads do you attack? There's a 
bit of a reality check when the artists go to their lawyer and the lawyer 
says, 'Sure, put the money in the trust account and let's spend the next 
three years chasing rabbits down holes.' Unless one of those Medusa heads 
really is high, and they're really making a business out of it, then I 
don't think it would be worth it."

This strange marriage of love and theft might last for a while, then.
***********************
Sydney Morning Herald
Are you switched on? turn viewers into active participants

Optus wants to turn viewers into active participants, writes Jenny Hailstone.


Picture this: you're watching television and a travel show advertises a 
deal on midwinter island getaways. By pressing a button on the remote 
control, you're instantly connected to a secure site where you enter your 
credit card details and book your dream holiday. With the help of an 
infrared keyboard, you then email the travel dates to your friends or 
perhaps even search for a date to accompany you.

This is a scenario that Optus believes is the future of pay TV - it calls 
it interactive television (iTV). Last December the pay TV provider moved to 
a commercial trial of interactive television to test demand and gauge 
reaction to pricing, says Optus spokesperson Melissa Favero.

Optus triallists pay $39.95 a month plus installation costs for a basic 
interactive package that allows them to send email, visit content partners' 
sites, chat, shop, order extra programming, and listen to the radio via 
their TV. The package also includes a searchable electronic program guide, 
14 TV channels and six free-to-air channels. There are now more than 3000 
paying customers in the trial.

Last October, a "trigger-based advertising campaign" illustrated the 
powerful direct response potential of the medium. About 1000 Optus trial 
households saw an icon appear on a MasterCard commercial, and by clicking a 
button on their remote control, triallists were taken directly to a Web 
site to register for a new "Summer Escape" promotion.

Interactive television is nothing new in Australia. More than 300,000 
Austar satellite households now view an "enhanced" digital television 
service with customised information such as local weather reports embedded 
in the picture. About one third of these subscribers, who have a telephone 
line connection to their set-top box, can enter competitions and vote on 
various topics through their TV.

But interactive television has failed to take off in Australia for several 
reasons. Greg Pettersen, business analyst with Jupiter Media Metrix, 
observes that there are still a number of industry issues to work out.

Unlike the UK, where the government helped to provide incentives for 
digital television by allowing multi-channelling, Australia does not allow 
broadcasters other than the ABC and SBS to provide multi-channel services - 
an important driver for the interactive television industry.

Second, there is the cost of buying overseas content. "The success of 
interactive television is very much contingent on the pay TV shared-content 
programming case being favourable to Foxtel and Optus," says Pettersen, who 
adds that Foxtel has not digitised its network.

Under a sharing arrangement, Foxtel would on-sell television content to 
providers such as Optus and therefore reduce the high costs of buying 
content individually from Hollywood studios. The case is now before the 
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

Third, there is still speculation about whether iTV will succeed 
financially. "Interactive television revenues are at least a few years 
off," says Pettersen.

Paul Carter, account director with the digital media company Victoria Real, 
says that people are taking a more pragmatic approach. "It's a reflection 
on the dotcom crash," he says.

Recent figures indicate gambling will provide a significant portion of 
interactive television income. In the last six months of 2001, Britain's 
leading pay TV provider, BSkyB, generated more than half its iTV revenue 
from sports betting.

There are also doubts about whether couch potatoes will want to interact 
with their television, traditionally a passive medium.

Despite this, there are calls for more Federal Government support for the 
industry. Carter says: "As a medium, it's not going to go away. But it's 
stalling. To be successful, interactive television needs to be highly 
promoted."
**********************
NEWS.com
Homeland security plan skimps on tech
By Margaret Kane
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

President Bush's plan to set up a new cabinet-level homeland defense agency 
would consolidate government efforts to protect the nation from high-tech 
attacks, but there's little word yet on exactly how.

The new office would take over the "key cyber security activities" 
performed by the Department of Commerce's Critical Infrastructure Assurance 
Office CIAO and the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center NIPC. 
It would use the General Services Administration's Federal Computer 
Incident Response Center and assume the functions and assets of the Defense 
Department's National Communications System to coordinate emergency 
preparedness for the telecommunications sector.

Bush's plan, sketchy so far, hints that there will be some information 
technology shuffling. The plan does call for "development of a single 
enterprise architecture" designed to eliminate "sub-optimized, duplicative 
and poorly coordinated" systems.



At first blush, it would appear that the president's plan may help the tech 
sector, but analysts say that enhanced cyberdefenses don't necessarily mean 
more spending.

"This reorganization of homeland defense agencies from 22 separate units 
into one doesn't change the overall IT budget that these existing agencies 
had," said James P. Lucier, an analyst at Prudential Securities.

Indeed, part of the plan encourages the new office to reduce "redundant" IT 
spending.

"There would be rational prioritization of projects necessary to fund 
homeland security missions based on an overall assessment of requirements 
rather than a tendency to fund all good ideas beneficial to a separate 
unit's individual needs, even if similar systems are already in place 
elsewhere," the plan states.

But there may be more work for companies that help with IT integration, 
Lucier said, since the new agency will need to bring together many 
disparate projects.

The House Subcommittee on Technology and Procurement Policy will hold 
hearings Friday on "Assessing Barriers to, and Technology Solutions for, 
Robust Information Sharing," with testimony from companies including 
WebMethods and Oracle.

And companies are already gearing up new sales pitches and focusing their 
efforts on this new branch of government. Earlier this week, for instance, 
Computer Sciences created a post of vice president for homeland security.

"(Computer Sciences) is working to address agencies' emerging needs in 
establishing greater physical access control and identifying potential 
threats using such tools as biometrics and cross-enterprise databases," the 
company said.
*********************


Lillie Coney
Public Policy Coordinator
U.S. Association for Computing Machinery
Suite 507
1100 Seventeenth Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20036-4632
202-659-9711